Beer/Drinks

A new smoothie truck is hitting the streets of the Spokane area.

For a variety of reasons, many people are cutting back on or cutting out drinking alcohol. Gallup reported last year that only 54% of Americans 18 and older report drinking alcohol, the lowest since they began such polling in 1939. And when they do drink, consumers have more choices than ever. These and other challenges have led to wine grape growers pulling out vines – the total acreage of Washington wine grapes is at its lowest since 2013.

In Oxford, Ohio, one of the largest beer competitions in the world was held on Wednesday.

The best craft cocktail menus offer a fine balance of art and information. I want a menu that’s just right: an objet d’art that brings me into the bar’s culture, transporting me to a new world and helping me find my way through it. These days the guides can be digital – there are some beautiful menus I’ve accessed by QR code – but the bespectacled book nerd in me still loves something that I can hold and flip through, that makes me reluctant to return it, even after ordering.

On Tuesday, Bloomsday celebrants were just as festive as the May 3 runners, but far less sweaty.

The glasses were laid out in a semicircle, each with a small pour of red wine and a plastic cover. Although it was still early in the morning, we were ready to taste (and spit). These were the product of Washington State University team’s research, led by professor Tom Collins, into the impacts of wildfire smoke on wine grapes and the wine made from them. I was eager, and a bit hesitant, as I began tasting, from left to right, the six glasses before me.

Spokane has its own week devoted to restaurants, but a newer community event is devoted to the city’s bars and bartenders.

Millions of Americans start their days with a cup (or three) of rich coffee made from freshly roasted beans.

It’s the water.

The first time I had grenadine – and the first time you probably had grenadine – was in a kiddie cocktail. A Shirley Temple. (Or a Roy Rogers, if the restaurant believed in rigid gender binaries.) It felt thrilling, because it was your first brush with the adult bar, a tiny act of culinary transgression. Grenadine! That was the stuff grown-ups used. Pour a little into a glass of soda, drop in a cherry, add a paper umbrella or a plastic sword, and suddenly you were the most sophisticated 6-year-old in the dining room.

Like so many Americans right now, I’m intently focused on the big football game coming up, eager to cheer on the teams with my fellow gridiron die-hards! I want to get their take on some of my most pressing questions – like, is halftime when they resurface the field and send out the Zamboni? Once the Seahawks goalie gets into the red zone, does someone throw a penalty kick? When do the Patriots yell “fore”?

Spring is still more than a month away but Starbucks is already counting the days, teasing its spring menu amid the widespread winter weather.

The question: Is red wine healthier than white wine?

We’re full tilt into the holiday season, and with Thanksgiving, the first of the annual Great Gluttonous Holidays, in the rearview mirror, heads are still spinning from putting together a holiday meal that doesn’t leave someone offended, unhappy or breaking out in hives.

After the release of “The Spokane Cookbook” in 2022, Ari Nordhagen had no intention of writing another book.

As the days get shorter, the nights longer, and the air has grown so chilled that even the gentlest of breezes feels like a slap in the face, the city sparkles with twinkling lights everywhere. You know what time it is …